When Are Third-Party Cookies Going Away?

Mastering the constant evolution of advertising is a contest for warriors. Marketers must develop content and campaigns on an increasing array of digital and Out-of-Home Advertising (OOH)  channels. Just when publishers mastered multiple device form factors down to the size of a wristwatch, upcoming omnichannel marketing realities are set to be even more disruptive.

Google’s intention to drop third-party cookie support is predicted to greatly affect programmatic advertising. Specifically, audience behavior visibility beyond advertiser websites is predicted to be limited at best. But some industry observers claim “the Cookiepocalypse” is good news for advertisers, with innovations in programmatic advertising being one answer.

While programmatic advertising has long been challenged with bot fraud, there are mature technologies that resolve it. For example, DoubleVerify has a solution that identifies fraud and classes of invalid traffic that cause ad fraud. Sophisticated Invalid Traffic or SIVT includes Adware, Malware, compromised device viruses, bots programmed to behave like human users and other false data manipulations.¹There is also General Invalid Traffic or GIVT that includes known and expected traffic sources such as traffic from pre-fetch browser functions, user-based filters, traffic from data centers and spiders and other standard website crawlers. Such traffic is not included in analysis of ad fraud. Today ads require authentication to eliminate fraud, SIVT and impression waste to allow marketers to purchase verified ad inventory.

Will programmatic ad inventory quality suffer as third-party cookie use declines? While participants debate answers, privacy-friendly technologies are not only already in use, many are arguably better at providing insights into un- and underserved markets for many advertisers.

Just as in every seismic industry shift, there will be winners and losers. While other browsers long ago addressed third-party cookie use, Google has set a vague date of ‘end of 2023’ to do so. Notably Google Chrome holds between 58%-72% of the internet browser market share.²Usage share of web browsers – Wikipedia Google also dominates paid search, commanding over 85% of that market’s share.³Search engine market share worldwide 2022 | Statista In a cookieless world, Google will suffer least, yet for some reason Google’s third-party cookie end-of-life continues.